If you were on a Jury, would you convict someone charged with carrying W/O license?

Would you convict a man carrying illegally

  • yes

    Votes: 39 32.0%

  • no

    Votes: 83 68.0%
  • Total voters
    122
We see killing another man as wrong. However, there is a difference between killing an innocent on the street, and defending innocents from harm. A'int nothing but situational ethics.
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Excellent point.
+1


The simple fact is the LAW cannot hope to conceive of every possible situation. Thus there are some laws that end up as poorly fitting, universal blanket statements.

Who else is better at deciding on the particular case at hand than the jury?
 
SecDef

So you would like to roll all three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial) into just one, and let jurors, in essence, take care of the whole enchilada ??
 
So you would like to roll all three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial) into just one, and let jurors, in essence, take care of the whole enchilada ??
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I think you're misinterpreting the guy, and what he's trying to say. Jury Nullification is merely another check on the legislature; a block against bad law. I doubt SecDef, or any of us, wants to dismantle the fedgov. :cool:
 
So you would like to roll all three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial) into just one, and let jurors, in essence, take care of the whole enchilada ??
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It's trivial to come up with a case where carrying w/o a license should not be against the law. In those cases, the jury would in fact be undoing the legislative and executive decisions in the case, but would be carrying out the judicial.

Some guy throws a gun out a car window, and I pick it up to prevent my 2 year daughter from grabbing it. If an officer arrests me, and a DA (who's an anti, and knows that I am pre-gun) decides to prosecute, while I am technically in violation of the law, I hope I can convince 12 jurors it makes no sense for me to be in that position in the first place.

It takes 12 to nullify, and remember it is only for that particular case.

It should be a far far far cry between cases of JN. About as common as crooked cops and crooked DAs, and crooked Judges all being on the same case using the letter of a poorly worded law against someone.

I STILL would rather let 10 guilty men go free than have 1 innocent man imprisoned.
 
if I were on a jury in a shall-issue state, yes

in California or one of the socalist states, if he didn't have a rap sheet, hell no.
 
All the Dickension images of the sickly widder an' her starvin' wee bairn aside aside, it isnt the juries province to let punishment influence their finding of fact.
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Then why did the somewhat non-Dickensonian Florida Legislature see fit to REQUIRE that a jury be told what the sentence would be at charge time? Perhaps they just had some extra paper and ink? Maybe they thought it would somehow make a better juror memoir? Possibly they wrote the law in Word and they had to add something to put that paragraph on the next page without a widow line?

I think you would have to have a pretty wild imagination, whether you are a judge, prosecutor, or defense attorney, to explain it any other way than that the legislature thought the jury should have it available for consideration during deliberations.

I'm still waiting for an explanation less lame than "just because they require it to be disclosed, doesn't mean they intend it to be considered".

If my lawyer (or doctor or mechanic) presented me with such reasoning, he'd see my back real quick and he better have a good collection agency.
 
Just by coincidence I was on jury duty yesterday in Fairfax County, Virginia. I did not serve on a jury but one of the cases on which I was considered but not selected was a criminal case, discharging a firearm in a public place. The defendent did not look like a person I would want to have living next door. There were some interesting questions asked of the potential jurors but I never got to hear or see any evidence. Also, in this county, the jury sets the sentence. Don't know what judges ever do.
 
The more I experience the justice system, the more I am coming to believe it's more of a free-for-all than the main players would have you think.

Maybe I'll think different if I'm ever a defendant.

I've looked through some of my criminal lawyer's pleadings that are available on the net. There's some pretty wild statements in them, and....he wins.

Why do I have a criminal lawyer if I'm not a defendant? I took the advice I saw here long ago that a gun should come with a lawyer.
 
Jn

SecDef

"In those cases, the jury would in fact be undoing the legislative and executive decisions in the case, but would be carrying out the judicial."
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Basically my point. It ain't the job of the jury to UNDO anything. And, if a juror decides to attempt to nullify a law he/she doesn't like, then that juror is most certainly NOT carrying out their sworn judicial responsibilities, either.
 
Basically my point. It ain't the job of the jury to UNDO anything. And, if a juror decides to attempt to nullify a law he/she doesn't like, then that juror is most certainly NOT carrying out their sworn judicial responsibilities, either.
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The jury is a fundamental part of the judicial system, so I disagree that it is not a part of their job. Unless the judicial branch has no right to overturn laws or use discretion?

I add discretion there since obviously the standard way to overturn laws is through appellate courts.

But then this isn't just a jury running amok, this is the ability for 12 people to mutually agree that in a particular case, the LAW and its repercussions is inappropriate. It doesn't set precedent.
 
Basically my point. It ain't the job of the jury to UNDO anything. And, if a juror decides to attempt to nullify a law he/she doesn't like, then that juror is most certainly NOT carrying out their sworn judicial responsibilities, either.
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Ever read a public law, like the ones in Title 18 ?

Many, if not all, public laws, at least federal laws, proscribe many things, not just one thing. Some of the things a public law proscribes are no-brainers, and only an idiot would not want an offender of that part of the law convicted. But some laws go overboard. Maybe a favor from one senator to another. But somehow things that are absurd or draconian get into public law. They may be things YOU want enforced but that many others DON'T.

Under these conditions, it is indeed the jury's job to undo things. In fact, the jury is the last barrier to the cruel and unusual nature of some minimum mandatory sentences.

If enough people feel that said punishments are inappropriate, it will cease to behoove prosecutors to pursue them. The legislature can then wonder why its laws aren't being enforced and fix them, leaving in what is necessary to protect the public from real dangers and removing what is unneeded.

Jury nullification is also a good way to remove unintended consequences of hastily enacted bad laws.
 
you wouldn't have a problem with me opening up a whore-house next door to your house ????
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There's a better answer than Danzig gave for this red herring.

No, I would not. But I would not want a benzene refinery opened up there either.

I got NO problem with a whore house being opened up in a business district.
 
Then why did the somewhat non-Dickensonian Florida Legislature see fit to REQUIRE that a jury be told what the sentence would be at charge time?
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Beats me, I have another trouble doing group buys, you can expect me to be up on the wierd vagaies of laws in all the 50 staes ;)

But here, read this:

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/jury_instructions/instructions.shtml

That will tell you how a jury is to be instructed. If this, then that.

WildhopeithelpsAlaska
 
Simply put.........as sworn jurors, that ain't their job.
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Of course that's their job.

If all the jury was there for was to judge guilt or innocence alone, there would be no point to having a jury of your peers. One judge could do that.

But not only are we guaranteed a jury trial of our peers, we're guaranteed a jury trial of our peers by the Bill of Rights. That is evidence that the Founders intended the jury trial as another check on gov't power.. which necessarily implies that one of the duties of the jury is to prevent people from being victimized by tyrannical laws.

If the judge says that ain't so.. heck. Some judges have said the 2A means the army can have guns to. Don't make 'em right.

-K
 
Simply put.........as sworn jurors, that ain't their job.
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Because a founder can express it far better than I:
John Adams, one of the more conservative leaders of this period, expressed the prevailing sentiments in his diary in 1771: "Now, should the melancholy case arise that the judges should give their opinions to the jury against one of these fundamental principles, is a juror obliged to find his verdict generally, according to this direction, or even to find the fact specially and submit the law to the court? Every man of any feeling or conscience, will answer no. It is not only his right, but his duty, in that case to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court."

The oath. You're the third person to reference it, seems to be the last hurdle you guys are putting up.

Again, I'll defer to those who can present a better argument:
The term "jury nullification" appears to connote jurors violating the law and violating their oaths. As Professor George Fletcher has noted, the term ". . . is unfortunate and misleading, because it suggests that when the jury votes its conscience, it is always engaged in an act of disrespect toward the law. The acquittal, supposedly, nullifies the law. In place of the law, it is said, the jury interposes its own moral judgment or political preferences."

Fletcher rejects the belief that jury nullification is an affront to the rule of law, and he provides a healthier image for the practice of it:

"[T]he function of the jury as the ultimate authority on the law [is] not to ‘nullify' the instructions of the judge, but to complete the law, when necessary, by recognizing principles of justification that go beyond the written law. It would be better if we abandon the phrase ‘jury nullification' and spoke instead of the jury's function in these cases of completing and perfecting the positive law recognized by the courts and the legislature."
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* Both of these quotes are from the California Bar Journal (March 1999) in the Point Counter Point article.
 
If all the jury was there for was to judge guilt or innocence alone, there would be no point to having a jury of your peers. One judge could do that.
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very good point.

Although I question the term "jury of your peers." I think that is a more modern term. It's supposed to be a fair and impartial jury. Jury of your peers really would mean having mobsters judge Al Capone.
 
John Adams aint stare decisis, and some article in a Law Journal aint the force of laws.

Deal with it.

Couch the lie in whatever moral terms ya want, its still a lie, its still contemptuous, still a slap in the face of law and justice and just another example of folks thinking they are above the law.

Ill take my chances with the law and the state thank you, not the armed law unto itself rabble.

WildthankgodtheleftiesareusuallywimpsAlaska
 
Couch the lie in whatever moral terms ya want, its still a lie, its still contemptuous, still a slap in the face of law and justice and just another example of folks thinking they are above the law
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:rolleyes: "the truth is what I say it is"
 
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